


all the memories i have are beautiful in my mind

by jonphaedrus



Category: Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 21:32:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7949896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What’s going on?” Florina asked, glancing between the two of them. “Lyn, you never swear like that.”</p><p>“Eliwood’s father died early this morning,” Ninian said softly, taking the burden off of Lyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the memories i have are beautiful in my mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ethereally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ethereally/gifts).



> prompt: the fe7 ot3

“What?” Lyn said, pulling down her sunglasses and blinking at Ninian, who tucked a lock of her hair back behind her ear, uncomfortable with being placed in the hotseat. “When?”

“Apparently last night. I only just got back from the hospital. Eliwood was so upset that he didn’t text me until this morning.” Unusual for him—Eliwood and Ninian were usually pretty much attached at the hip. Frankly, Lyn was surprised that Ninian was even _here—_ she would have thought the other girl would have left straight for Eliwood’s side. “I went already but he’s so distraught that he asked me to leave.”

“Jesus,” Lyn settled on after a time, leaning back in her chair. It was a hot July that year, and in the trees cicadas screamed their whining drone, while in the distance came the buzz of someone mowing their lawn. It was always the normal, straightforward things that seemed most out of place at times like this. That was the most jarring, the most _wrong_ —you expected the world to stop, but it went on as if nothing at all had ever happened.

The heat was why she had been out at the poolside when Ninian had come calling, although she now wished she’d gone in to talk to her friend. This wasn’t the place to have this conversation. Too late now, though—but maybe it was for the best, since her grandfather didn’t have AC and it was cooler outside the house than it was in, with the breeze off of the pool. “Is Hector still with him?”

“He was when I left.” In the pool, Florina had paddled slowly over and popped her head out of the water, blinking at them. She peeled off her swim cap and bobbed up to lean her arms over the edge of the pool onto the sun-warmed concrete, water droplets rolling down the sides of her head. She scratched at her bare scalp, but didn’t bother getting the rest of the way out.

“What’s going on?” Florina asked, glancing between the two of them. “Lyn, you never swear like that.”

“Eliwood’s father died early this morning,” Ninian said softly, taking the burden off of Lyn. Her face was pale when she related the news a second time in as many minutes, and then Florina gasped in surprise and almost slipped back into the pool. When she got her balance back she had blanched rapidly, and her eyes looked bright with tears.

“No!” She gasped. “No, that’s horrible!” Florina had begun to cry; soft and gentle-hearted as ever. “Is there anything anyone can do?”

“It was a hit and run accident last night. That’s why I missed dance rehearsal this morning—I was at the hospital with him.”

“This is awful,” Florina sniffed, horror-struck. “And after his mother last year—“ Eleanora’s cancer had been long, drawn out, and awful. Lyn wasn’t sure if that or this was worse.

“Yeah...” Lyn whispered at last, hoarse. Another orphan. That made most of their year, now, Lyn and Hector included. At least most of them had someone else in their family surviving. Even Ninian had Nils. Eliwood, though...Eliwood—

He was all alone.

The sliding door onto the patio whispered open and her grandfather stumbled out, looking tired. Ninian waved to him. “Hello, Mr. Caelin,” she was trying to sound chipper, but it just came out worn.

“I heard Lyn raise her voice, is everything all right?”

For the third time in a row, Ninian related the sobering news of that morning, and Lyn’s grandfather’s face creased darkly. “Unhappy news indeed,” he said after a moment, shaking his head. “Is Hector with him?” She nodded. “Have you been to him?”

“I just left and came over here right straight away. He didn’t want me to have to be there...while he was like that.”

“Strong of him.” Lyn’s grandfather shook his head. “You shouldn’t listen to him, though. He’s trying to be the man his father would have wanted him to be. You go back over there, and you tell him if he needs anything, we’ll be here for him, all right?”

“Thank you, Mr. Caelin.”

 

 

Eliwood missed the first two weeks of school. And then, two more. It was the funeral, first, and then the inquest, and then the court case. He missed two more weeks of school having to testify. Two more after that with trial. Two more after that, as the jury wrapped it up. Two more. Two more. Two more.

Over Christmas break, Lyn heard that he’d been out of the city for a good bit of that, and even Hector hadn’t been with him the whole time, when the boys were usually thick as thieves. As the spring semester finally began, Lyn was on a lookout in their homeroom that first day, tucked in at the table with Hector and Ninian while Florina was off in the bathroom fixing her wig—her chemo was finally done with, and her hair had just started to grow back in. It was just the tiniest bit of stubble along the top and sides of her scalp, but she hadn’t gotten used to it with her wig again yet.

It was still ten minutes before the first bell before a boy that Lyn barely recognised came into the room. At first glance, she thought she didn’t know him, but then—

“Hey!” Hector called, laughing and waving him over. “I didn’t think you’d make it!”

And then he smiled, and Lyn—Lyn reeled, astounded, because there was Eliwood and she had hardly known him. Before, when she’d seen him last at the funeral, he’d had shaggy hair, grown in a few inches past his ears, now cut cropped close and short like his father had kept his, and the last of the babyfat had sloughed off of his face, leaving him with a sharp, jutting chin and fine cheekbones. He looked tired, the skin under his eyes sagging and purple-hued. His clothes didn’t quite fit him, either, he’d lost so much weight.

He came over to the table and Hector practically leapt up out of his chair, buried his best friend in his arms. “Hey,” Hector murmured, muffled, in Eliwood’s shoulder. “Glad to see you back.”

“Hi,” Eliwood laughed, although it was a wan, pale thing, and he patted Hector’s back awkwardly when it became clear that he wouldn’t be getting out of that hug come hell or high water. “It’s good to see you too. You saw me on Sunday, thought.”

“That was at home. Not here.” Hector finally let Eliwood go, and leaned back slightly, searching Eliwood’s eyes. “You sure you’re ready?”

“I’m not doing another semester from home, if that’s what you’re meaning.”

“No, I mean—“

“Yeah.”

For a moment, Lyn was confused about their rapid, hushed exchange, but the meaning became clear soon enough, because Hector cupped Eliwood’s cheeks like he was made of fine, near-cracked porcelain, and kissed him full on the mouth. The door to the room had just opened and Florina stood, shocked, and gasped as she stared at the spectacle before her, mouth part open.

The room was so silent that Lyn could hear the hum of the projector.

Marcus, their homeroom teacher, sighed and leaned on his hands at his desk. “PDA is still technically against school rules, boys,” he said, although Hector and Eliwood continued to kiss despite that. “Being gay does not make the PDA stop being PDA.” They still kept kissing. “Eliwood, please do not make me send you to the principal’s office on the first day because I _guarantee_ you that Uther is going to laugh at you and Hector.”

The spectre of being sent to his brother’s office jarred Hector out of sucking face, and he flushed as red as Eliwood’s hair. “Uh,” he said, “Yeah, please don’t do that. Because he told me if we did he’d do something awful so let’s just not do that.”

Marcus sighed.

 

 

It was all over the school within the week. Everyone had always just assumed that Hector was as straight as a compass. Eliwood, everyone had known was bisexual for _years_ —ever since he and Ninian, when they’d been still in middle school, had had to explain multiple times that no, they weren’t dating, and no, they didn’t intend to date, and no, they had no interest in dating, and no, being bisexual didn’t mean he was attracted to _every_ boy and _every_ girl and no, being asexual didn’t make Ninian a plant or an amoeba, so can we let it go, please. But Hector had been a surprise.

Lyn wasn’t surprised; he’d admitted his mind-bogglingly large crush on Eliwood to her two years before on a band trip, and had sworn her to secrecy. She’d been amused then, but now—something felt a little adrift in her. Even though Hector—and Eliwood—seemed happier than she’d ever seen them, she felt.

Jealous was not the right word. Neither, in fact, was left out. She wasn’t jealous: they were both happy and really clearly in love. She wasn’t left out: they weren’t making her or Ninian into third wheels, and they still did everything together, the four of them, like they always had. She had understood how Eliwood had pulled away from everyone but Hector after his father’s death. He’d been devastated, and she didn’t blame him. She’d done much the same after her parents had passed, although it had been when they were all younger and she’d been able to bounce back a little bit easier. But Lyn found herself…

Lost.

It was some weeks afterward, tucked up in bed with Florina on a sleepover, at the other girl took Lyn’s hand in hers, sighed against her shoulder. “Something’s been wrong with you lately,” Florina nudged her, gently as ever. Her hair was longer now, starting to flop at an inch or two, and Lyn had forgotten what a soft chestnut it was without her powder-blue wig. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know,” Lyn wished she didn’t have to say it but she was as lost as anyone else was at the depths of her feelings. “I just feel...” she sighed. “It’s stupid; never mind.”

“It’s _not,_ ” she could hear, if not see, Florina rolling her eyes. “You can’t always put everyone else ahead of yourself, Lyndis. If it’s about Eliwood and Hector, you should say something to them!”

“You make it sound like I want to date one of them!” Lyn sounded hysterical even to herself. Florina went quiet.

“Don’t...don’t you?”

 

 

On the last pep rally of their senior year, Lyn, Hector, and Eliwood snuck away from campus. They invited Ninian, but she was actually on the cheer squad and did want to stay. Hector, who was the star quarterback, had absolutely no interest in staying. That was very true to form.

They walked down to the nearest gas station together, talking of nothing and everything all at once, one of Hector’s broad arms over either of their shoulders. It was one of those May afternoons where everything feels supersaturated, like a Southern Gothic novel. All the trees were impossibly green, the sky impossibly blue, the road impossibly black tarmac. It felt wrong, though—the sepia tone was slinking in, the knowledge that she was living her own nostalgia tasted heady on Lyn’s tongue like the afterscent of mosquito repellant.

“I think I’m in love with you,” she blurted, as suddenly and inexorably as a gunshot. Mid-step, Eliwood stumbled and Hector’s laugh froze halfway out of his throat. “ _Both_ of you,” she clarified, rather than let it hang unsaid.

The boys stared at her, neither of them sure how to respond. Lyn, carefully, folded her hands together. She hesitated; unsure of where to go now. “I just...Eliwood, I would have pulled away if I’d been you. I remember that I did, when my parents died. I understand how much you needed space but I—I _missed_ you. And Hector, too. You felt so far away, and now this year is going to be over and we’re going to move on and...” it was cliché, yes, but. Nothing would ever be the same again. All three of them had now lost their childhoods in a very real way; they were orphans moving on into the adult world. High school would be over. Now they had very little family. Eliwood was quite, truly, alone.

“I know it doesn’t matter but I just wanted you to know.”

“I mean,” Hector, always talking before he thought, began, “I thought you and Florina were lesbians.”

Lyn shoved him a little less than good-naturedly. “You’re bisexual, idiot! You know what it means!”

“Well, yeah, but—you two are dating! Or I thought you were dating!”

“We were.” When Florina had been diagnosed with lymphoma the previous spring, she had insisted that she break up with Lyn, despite Lyn’s protestations. Not because they didn’t still care deeply for one another, but because Florina wanted to not be scared of what might happen if the worst came to pass. She had been terrified, for nearly a year, that if she got sick again, Lyn would suffer for it. She’d thought that maybe, if they weren’t like that, then she wouldn’t have anything to be scared of.

Florina had been fine, in the end, but she and Lyn had found that they were happier as they were. They were no less in love—it had just turned, slightly, from romance and into something much more; platonic and greater than any other emotion that she’d known in her life thus far.

“Did you mean it?” Eliwood said. He always got to the heart of the matter; it was his way. Unlike Hector, who just put his damn foot in it rather than try and figure out the _what_ and the _why_. “That you—“

“Yes.”

They were all three silent, the kind of deep breath before the plunge.

“I’m sorry,” Eliwood said at last, his face gone soft. “I didn’t even think about how it must have felt, me just...shutting you out like that. I would have shut Hector out too, if I hadn’t been living with him.” He reached out, took her hand tightly in his.

“I just wanted to help.” Lyn felt cut adrift, and she stepped forward, pulling Eliwood tightly into her arms. “I just wanted you to be okay.”

“I am,” Eliwood mumbled, wetly. “I mean, I’m not, but I will be.”

“But I don’t want you to _without_ me,” Lyn said, frantically. She felt Hector’s presence, and then he wrapped himself around them both, held them tight in his ridiculous arms.

“So don’t,” he said, as utterly sure and steady as stone. “Come with us. It feels wrong, without you along.” True—they had been together, the three of them, as long as Lyn could remember. Longer, if Uther’s stories were to be believed. “So let’s go forward as we’ve come thus far.”

Together.


End file.
